Tag: "Sarah Palin"

ABC has released some transcripts of clips of Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin:

Clip 1:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say “I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?”

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I’m ready.

GIBSON: And you didn’t say to yourself, “Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I — will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?”

PALIN: I didn’t hesitate, no.

OK then.

More:

The Governor advocated the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. When asked by Gibson if under the NATO treaty, the U.S. would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

“And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable,” she told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an exclusive interview.

Palin advocated the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, meaning that if attacked again in the future, the United States would be bound to go to war. “I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Palin, who obtained her first passport this year [!!!] and who has served just two years as Alaska’s governor, told Gibson that she was up to the challenge of being Sen. John McCain’s vice president. “I answered [McCain]’yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. Palin sat down with Gibson on a day that was filled with wrenching memories and solemn ceremonies for the nearly 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 attacks.

It was also the day that Palin, the mother of five, attended a deployment ceremony for her oldest son, Track, an Army infantryman whose Stryker unit is being shipped off to Iraq later this month. Palin defended a previous statement in which she reportedly characterized the war in Iraq as “task from God”. Gibson quoted her as saying: “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” But Palin said she was referencing a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln. “I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.” When asked if she believed she was “sending [her] son on a task that is from God,” Palin said: “I don’t know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.”

Yikes, when I said that their star columnist could write something about Palin even dumber than what Gary Kamiya wrote, I didn’t mean it as a dare. (Frighteningly, I’m inclined to think that Paglia believes that before Madonna (and, implicitly, Paglia), feminists really were “anti-sex.”) Bonus: “But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools?…We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media.” Yes, let’s not choose to believe her openly stated policy views — Paglia just knows she’s a feminist deep down!

For starters, I’ll simply vow that if the essence of this campaign distills down to earmarks — and if that becomes the McCain-Palin route to victory — I will join the Alaska Independence Party and immediately press for my state’s secession and reabsorption by Canada.

But not that bad, apparently. According to a “summary of requests for federal appropriations” posted to her budget office’s website earlier this year, Palin requested millions of federal dollars for everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals.

I suppose it almost goes without saying that Palin’s office will be requesting funds to study how a successful abstinence-only curriculum can be incorporated into the education of crabs. I suppose it also goes nearly without saying that the harbor seals will have to pay for their own DNA kits.

More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old, first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday — off the record at her handlers’ insistence.

Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said. . . .

So far, Palin has barely spoken with voters either. Since the convention, she and McCain have breezed through a Wisconsin ice cream shop, a New Mexico restaurant and a Missouri barbecue place, shaking hands with diners but not taking any questions. Photographers and television cameras have been allowed full view while reporters are typically kept too far away to ask questions or hear most of the conversations

This is infuriating and at the same time really, really fucking weird. There have been plenty of candidates for higher office in US history who have been recruited precisely because they could be counted on to say — figuratively speaking — nothing during the course of a campaign. But to have a candidate who literally says nothing except to recycle the applause lines from a speech written for a fill-in-the-blank vice presidential nominee a political eon before his or her selection…? I’m just not sure there are words caustic enough to describe what’s happening here. The fact that it’s worked so well so far is maddening.

There’s a lot of this kind of thing going around right now (shorter version: she can bring home the salmon and fry it up in a pan). Indeed it’s being claimed that “Palin’s supermom abilities provoke envy and anxiety in other women, especially other working mothers.”

Given that the GOP is currently marketing Palin as a more authentic brand of feminist than the old man-marriage-and-children-hating blue state variety, one of the many questions I’d like to see our enterprising press corps pursue is: Who is actually raising Sarah and Todd’s Palin’s children, and in particular their five-month old special needs infant? The Palins both appear to work full-time for income.

I suspect these are, at a much more muted yet still comparatively speaking extremely privileged level, the same sorts of special abilities that would, for example, allow John McCain to escape the ravages of a hurricane by moving into one of his other houses.

An editor really needed to tell Gary Kamiya to go back to the drawing board with this one. But I suppose for a publication that publishes Camille Paglia this is unrealistic; indeed, since the piece didn’t relentlessly plug the author’s books and add a lot of deepthink Madonna references from the early 90s, they may even argue that it’s an improvement over their star columnist’s similar nonsense.

Marc Ambinder says that a GOP ad “claims that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” which is technically true but functionally false.”

Let’s be clear. Palin’s repeated claims are not “technically” true, or “metaphorically” true or “spiritually” true or true in any sense at all. They’re unequivocal, bald-faced lies (although Ambinder’s phrasing obscures this fact.”)To review, Palin’s claim was: “I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that Bridge to Nowhere.” But:

Congress ended the earmark for the bridge before Palin was governor; she had no authority to say “no” to anything.

At this time, Palin supported the bridge and criticized its opponents.

Her claim isn’t “technically” true; it’s 100% dishonest. And while the issue itself is trivial, given its centrality to the McCain campaign the lies certainly aren’t. As Matt says, perhaps “the electorate doesn’t seem to penalize” the McCain for these lies because pundits like Ambinder will fudge and obfuscate rather than calling McCain or Palin’s lies lies, while they were happy to call Al Gore a liar for things that weren’t lies or for obvious jokes or for things that he didn’t say at all.

What is there to say about a politician who believes that government should be big enough to provide people with hockey rinks but small enough that citizens in their darkest hour must spring for the cost of investigating the crimes committed against them?

Oh, sure, it’s been done on American blogs too. But “decent” uber-wanker Nick Cohen gives us the full Republican-ressentiment script. Claim: “On the other, liberal journalists turned [Palin’s] family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance.” Omitted: a single name or concrete example. Presumed reason: some Guy With a Sign and/or Random Blog Commenter Somewhere aside the charge is invented.

We’ll be seeing plenty more of that. Republicans are very good at creating such scripts from thin air, and they have a lot of useful idiots to work with.

COLORADO SPRINGS — The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else.”Sa-rah! Pa-lin!” came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to thenation just a week earlier. The day before, thousands screamed “Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!” at an amphitheater outside Detroit.”Real change with a real woman,” read one sign at a Wisconsin rally. “Hurricane Sarah leaves liberals spinning,” cried another.In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity. And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances.”She’s the draw for a lot of people,” said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar. “The fact that she’s someone new, not the old everything we’ve seen before.”

McCain’s hopes of winning Colorado rest on getting a big turnout in El Paso County (home of James Dobson and Focus on the Family). Paris Hilton, apparently, is worth a Mass.

Steve M. says just about all that needs to be said about this piece in the Times, wherein we learn that throughout her adult life, Sarah Palin has been distinguished among other things — wait for it — by fearlessly venturing out into public with her children. Because secular, coastal progressives hide their kids in the car trunk or lock them kids in the basement and force them to assemble small electronic devices with their tiny fingers.

I’ll note as well that Kim Severson brings up the use of the term “Palinbots,” claiming that “some liberal Democrats” have used the nickname to dismiss Palin’s supporters. Aside from the fact that the term has not exactly gone viral (see, for example, this for comparison), the more important point is that the nickname was actually popularized by Dan Fagan, a wingnut talk show host and columnist from Anchorage who loathes Palin but loves him some Ted Stevens.

But since every criticism of Sarah Palin is by definition a Left Wing Smear, the details shouldn’t bother us.